Mega Bloks - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

[TheOrcKing]

Mega Bloks TMNT at the New York Comic-Con. It looks as though they plan on tackling the original cartoon style plus the latest running one for Nickelodeon and some 'Half Shells' offshoot similar to LEGO's DUPLO for young children I guess.

[jbacunn]

Those figures look pretty good.

[jaylay]

Dang who's gonna want Lego TMNT when these look bad ass!

[Locutus001]

Mega Bloks Minifigures always looked more accurate.

On the other hand the plastic and paintjob always looked cheap.

The magic of LEGO is not that it is the most accurate toy ever (shapewise) but the interchangeability. Want to put the turtles head on a businessman suit? No problem. Want to make Splinter to a chef (cook), no problem. With Mega Bloks minifigs that's just not possible. You get what you buy and that's as far as your imagination can go with it.

Buying a toy (or whatsoever) for you or your children is always about making decissions. For me there are several reasons why I'd buy LEGO before these other toys. To name just a few: great details, overall good design, high quality for years!, interchangeability of most parts! --> you're never limited to just this one toy.

If you buy a Hasbro X-Wing for example you'll end up with a pretty good design and the paintjob allows you to get more details than with LEGO.

But this one X-Wing will get boring after some time and end up in Toy-Heaven. Why? Because that's all it is and all it can do... being a big piece of plastic that looks like a X-Wing. With LEGO you can build something new with these bricks. Or add something new. You name it!

 

 

Same goes for minifigs... of course there are more detailed Vaders out there (or Ninja Turtles) but you cannot swap pieces.

 

Yep these turtles DO look good, but the building? Please... they didn't put much effort into this did they?

 

[TheOrcKing]

All Mega Bloks has shown here are a select few figures for their take on the line (classic, Nickelodeon, and 'cutesy') but nothing as to what the actual purchasable sets will be (whereas at least LEGO had plenty of official content to show off when they had the license). That water tower seems to be the closest of an official build in part while everything else is simply makeshift scenery for the event's display. These figures are possibly some of the best to come from Mega Bloks looking at how close to the source material of the classic cartoon followed by the turtles' current incarnation they managed to achieve while also incorporating a nice degree of action figure possibility.

One key difference between LEGO and Mega Bloks is how either side approaches the characters they include in their sets. LEGO has traditionally kept with a single signature system decided upon after a number of various prototypes decades ago. Therefore any person, for example from a cartoon, gets 'LEGOfied' into a minifigure. An amount of realistic details are lost in the conversion process but the main features are usually there. The LEGO minifigure can be considered a somewhat square and simpler version of the human form. They lack the sophistication of a prime action figure but are easy to modify and play with.

On the other hand, Mega Bloks does not have a designated system and leans towards the ways of 'anything goes' or 'match the material' miniature action figures to include much detail in mold, print, & function. There is a maintained level of scale overall between the figures so at least you can place one of their Halo soldiers beside a Call of Duty trooper without either looking out of place by much. However customization is only possible between figures of the same kind not to mention how much any character from a different theme (try placing a SpongeBob beside a Halo Spartan) appears completely alien to one another. With LEGO no matter what the universe, all minifigures were done under the same art style if you will meaning some creature from Star Wars could stand next to a medieval villager and no one would bat an eye yet under Mega Bloks' concept of a figure such theme blending is not possible.

Both have their respective pros & cons of course. Mega Bloks' attention to detail for their little characters is great and each highly poseable but not flexible outside of the area (theme) they were meant for. LEGO's minifigures may not be realistic in general body frame shaping but the system works allowing for lots of detail in the printing and giving infinite possibilities in regards to customization. The Mega Bloks handling of TMNT considering the figures is very spot-on but unfortunately are simply too cartoony to go with any of their own other figures. Now although not perfect representations, LEGO did a nice job of morphing the turtles into minifigures; ones that can actually go with every other minifigure ever made.

I will give one thing for Mega Bloks though; at least they have Rocksteady and Bebop, two baddies sorely missing from LEGO's area.

[pickleboy]

Lego half assed the TMNT line...very disappointed.